The invention relates to a device for chopping up garden waste or the like of the type comprising a housing mounted on support legs and having at least one ejector opening, a preferably vertical charging passage mounted on the housing, a carrier disk adapted to rotate in the housing about an upright axis and mounted on the shaft of a motor attached to the housing so that the disk shuts off the housing at a lower end thereof and at least one generally radially aligned knife on the disk which is placed on the trailing edge, i. e. the edge which is to the rear in the direction of rotation, of a slot in the disk. The knife is arranged to cooperate with a stationary support bolster in the form of a circumferential part, extending transversely in relation to the direction of rotation, of the charging passage under which the knife moves.
An apparatus having these features has been described in German Pat. No. 3,324,274. In this known device the motor is arranged on top of the housing. The charging passage, which is also mounted at the top, accordingly is located radially outside the centrally placed motor and has a kidney-shaped cross section. Arrangements of this type have to have a large overall size if they are to ensure a large enough inlet cross section of the charging passage. If the arrangement is designed with a smaller overall size and with a correspondingly reduced inlet cross section of the charging passage, its cross section would however be too small and the consequence of this would be increased likelihood of stoppages, more especially when chopping up flabby leaf material etc. The known design principle is therefore not applicable to small choppers, for which however there is a considerable demand.